Marshwood girls can't keep pace with Gorham in season opener

SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Angie Littlefield vowed a deep rotation in her first game as interim coach of the Marshwood High School girls basketball team, and then went out and produced one.

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By Mike Zhe

seacoastonline.com

By Mike Zhe

Posted Dec. 7, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Mike Zhe
Posted Dec. 7, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Angie Littlefield vowed a deep rotation in her first game as interim coach of the Marshwood High School girls basketball team, and then went out and produced one.

What those myriad combinations couldn't produce was an opening night win.

The Hawks dropped their Western Maine Class A opener to Gorham, 69-33, hanging around into the second quarter but then getting overtaken by the Rams' superior ball-handling, shooting and prowess on the offensive boards.

"They applied some pressure and we fell apart offensively," said Littlefield. "Defensively, we played pretty hard but they have some good shooters that we didn't contain very well."

Freshman guard Emily Esposito led the Rams, a Class A regional quarterfinal team last year, with 19 points. Senior guard Macy Morrison had a team-high nine points for Marshwood, with forwards Johnna Kashmer and Kat Locke adding eight and six, respectively.

Of the 11 healthy players on the Hawks' roster, nine saw time in the first quarter alone. The notable one who didn't was tri-captain and junior guard Megan McLean, the only returning starter from last year's 9-10 team, who has not been cleared to play after suffering a preseason concussion.

"It affected us not having her there because I think she would have led the floor in a way that would help us," said Littlefield, who said she hopes to have McLean back in the lineup by the end of next week.

Just a decade removed from her own high school playing days, Littlefield was named coach in early November after nine-year coach Lee Petrie decided to take a leave of absence. Petrie and his wife recently adopted a teenage son from Ethiopia and he cited time constraints in stepping away from the job.

Littlefield grew up in Wells and played her high school ball locally at Seacoast Christian School. She spent two years coaching the JV team at Freeport and last year was hired to coach the JVs at Marshwood, guiding that team to a 15-2 record.

"It was a bit overwhelming but it was a fairly smooth transition," she said, of the 11th-hour promotion. "I had the pleasure to coach a lot of the girls in the past. It made the transition a bit smoother. They knew who I was."

Her debut drew a tough foe in Gorham, which went 12-8 a year ago and returned seven players from that team, many of them perimeter players. Add to the mix Esposito and this is a team poised to take a big step forward this winter.

The Hawks owned a 10-5 lead in the latter stages of the first quarter, in part because the Rams struggled against their zone press and misfired on their first six 3-point attempts.

"You know what? Opening game jitters a little bit," said Gorham coach Laughn Berthiaume. "I thought we were trying to play a little too fast. We had some good looks, some looks close to the hoop that we didn't finish."

Abby Hamilton (10 points) and another freshman guard, Kaylea Lundin, connected from deep on back-to-back trips to close the quarter. Those served as the foundation for a 14-1 run that upped the Rams lead to 23-13.

A 7-0 spurt at the end of the half made it a 37-21 game at halftime. The Rams came out behind Esposito and scored the first seven points after the break to remove any doubt, scoring second-chance points almost at will and forcing turnovers everywhere on the floor.

"I told them the things that were killing us were our turnovers, our free-throw shooting and, offensively, just not coming together," said Littlefield.

The coach claimed no pre-game jitters in her first try running a varsity show, just an understanding of how much faster the game is and how her players will have to adjust going forward.

"It showed some things we have to work on," she said, "but how hard a defensive team we can be."